PBS

On the Wednesday, April 30, The Reid Report, MSNBC host Joy Reid attacked Wisconsin Republican Rep. Paul Ryan's budget plan, claiming that it "guts" programs to help people in poverty, and ended up cracking that he, like Mitt Romney, "wants to fire Big Bird" because the budget would end federal government funding for PBS. [See video below.]

Donald Sterling, the beleaguered owner of the Los Angeles Clippers, has been banned from the NBA for life. But for some in the media, the league's disciplinary action is something that should be pursued against socially conservative owners by virtue of their political beliefs. [Video below. MP3 audio here.] Take Esquire political blogger Charlie Pierce, for example. Appearing as a guest on…

On Monday’s PBS NewsHour, anchor Judy Woodruff sat down for a conversation with former U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, and she tried to get the amiable, elderly jurist to criticize his more conservative former colleagues. Stevens, to his credit, didn’t take the bait. [Video below. MP3 audio here.] The interview focused on Stevens’ new book about six amendments he would like to…

Since Monday, April 14, ABC's Claire Shipman has been touring the network and cable news networks to promote her new book that she co-wrote with Katty Kay entitled "The Confidence Code: The Science and Art of Self Assurance-What Women Should Know." Despite the eight television appearances Shipman has made since last Monday, only two interviews openly acknowledged her marriage to White House…

While HHS secretary Kathleen Sebelius was getting a polite shove out the door, PBS NewsHour analyst Mark Shields offered a note of disclosure: “Well, first of all, let me just admit up front, Kathleen Sebelius has been a personal friend. For 46 years, I have known her.” He even oddly said she “stepped up manfully, to use a bad adverb” in taking the blame for Obamacare. But Shields and his…

Charlie Rose, during a panel discussion about the new UN report on climate change, had the audacity to insult global warming skeptics as “climate deniers” even as he brought on a so-called expert who once predicted the “greenhouse effect” would cause “food riots” all across North America...in 1995. Everyone remembers the great North American Food Riots of ‘95? Right? Well that crazy scenario…

Here’s a real shocker. Someone in Hollywood confessing they are “patriotic.” Mindy Kaling, the star and creator of Fox’s The Mindy Project, admitted on Friday’s Charlie Rose show that she’s “weirdly patriotic” - because of course being patriotic in the left-leaning entertainment industry must be considered weird. Still it was refreshing to hear someone in Hollywood celebrate American…

On Wednesday night, Tavis Smiley welcomed film director Errol Morris onto the set of his PBS program to talk about Morris’ new documentary on former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Unlike Bill Maher, who challenged Morris when he interviewed him last Friday, Smiley joined Morris in maligning Rumsfeld throughout the entire interview. [Video below. MP3 audio here.] Smiley seemed appalled…

ABC, CNN, MSNBC and PBS on Wednesday and Thursday all covered the "shocking" corruption involving the Democratic mayor of Charlotte, North Carolina. Yet, while talking about the tens of thousands of dollars in bribes he sought, none of these networks identified Patrick Cannon's political party. Only a Fox News host referred to him as a Democrat.  On ABC's Good Morning America, Amy Robach…

Barack Obama has taken a few soft-soap interviews on the PBS NewsHour, so anchor Judy Woodruff didn't want to say he was sell Obamacare in less than dignified forums -- like prank interviews with the schlub from "The Hangover" movies. Pseudoconservative analyst David Brooks and liberal Mark Shields typically agreed that Obama has oodles of dignity and cannot be mocked. Brooks said only if…

Leave it to PBS to take a local controversy and turn it into a symbol of the class war that is supposedly plaguing this country. On Tuesday’s NewsHour, the taxpayer-subsidized network raised a stink over so-called Google buses that carry San Francisco residents to their jobs at high-tech companies 30 or 40 miles south of the city. [Video below. MP3 audio here.] Anchor Judy Woodruff drew the…

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman went on PBS’s Charlie Rose show Monday night and defended President Obama’s soft foreign policy approach to the crisis in Ukraine. [Video below. MP3 audio here.] Of that approach, which so far has consisted of sanctions against 11 Russian and Ukrainian officials, Friedman said:

PBS found a sly new way to promote ObamaCare on Monday’s NewsHour. It came as part of a feature story on nutrition for young mothers and their infants. Anchor Judy Woodruff introduced the story by talking about malnutrition in young children and the importance of proper nutrition for mothers, particularly young ones. This set up her selling point: “Starting in 2010, a program under the health…

An unsigned Tuesday article on Yahoo! News could have been mistaken as a press release for PBS's latest TV production attacking the Catholic Church. The unknown author hyped the Church's "horrible year" in 2012 "on many fronts, not just with mounting evidence of financial impropriety at the Vatican bank, but also with incidents of sexual abuse by clergy spreading to more than 20 countries and,…